Huck Out West

by Robert Coover

  “I think I met that sad fellow in a saloon,” I says, and Homer he says, “Well, he was a hard drinker, but he was the straight-shootingest sumbitch I ever knowed, leastaways when he was down sober.”

  Whilst Homer was trumpeting on (“I’ll rip that hard-ass cunnel apart with my bare hands if I ever catch him alone by hisself!”), I fell asleep in the saddle, waked from time to time by the snow and Star’s restlessness. My head weighed down and kept bouncing off my chest. My limbs didn’t have no feeling in them and my thoughts was all muddled up. There was a moment when me and Dan was in a circus, and it seemed like the realest thing ever. We was way up on a high icy platform skiddering about, and Homer was up there, or else it was Tom, trying to push Dan off. Their feet went out and they both dropped away, and I was a-dropping, too—I come to with a start, nearly falling off of the horse, and when I looked around, I couldn’t think at first where I was, only that it was dreadful dark and cold.

  “Who was that Dan feller you was yelping about?” says someone beside me. It warn’t Homer there no more, it was General Hard Ass’s whiskery scout Charlie.

  “A soldier I knowed who got killed.”

  “By injuns?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “Which tribe done it?

  “They said it was the Lakota.”

  “You and the general got that sadfulness in common, then,” Charlie says. “He lost a young officer in a ambush, the boy and all his party. They was a-bringing the general a dispatch, but they got entirely massacreed instead. All them sweet boys with their glistning headbones on show, it warn’t a uplifting sight.” Charlie’s whiskers was white with snow like I s’posed mine was, except his was painted with tobacco drool. “Them injuns was also Lakotas. Lakotas and Cheyennes, palling together in their heathen devilment. We gotta larn ’em they cain’t do that. It’s like larning your dog not to shit in the tent—the stupid creturs cain’t think fur theirselves, so you hafta swat ’em now’n agin to make the rules stick.” Charlie took off his slouch hat to knock the snow off of it and unpin the floppy front brim, then he set it back on his bald dome, tugging it down to his ears, and he touched his forehead and shoulders like some religionists do for luck. “They’s a pack a them shameless Cheyenne butchers camped just up ahead. They think night-fighting is unsivilized, the iggorant sapheads, so they won’t be especting us. We’ll catch ’em with their breechclots down.”

  “Theirs is a sad life,” I says, thinking about what Dan said.

  “Yup,” says Charlie. He leaned over to spit into the snow. “And it’s ’bout to git sadder.”

  When I asked him what happened to Homer, he says, “That dang blowhard run off with some other mizzerbul buggers. I gotta go catch ’em and hang ’em, nor else shoot ’em if they take a vilent dislike to the rope.” He peered over his shoulder, twitching like he often done, and he made that good luck sign again. “Fallen angels,” he says. “Ain’t nuthin more wickeder.” It had got dead quiet with only the push-push of the horses plodding in the snow. “The general was mighty inpressed by your bronc busting, Hucklebelly,” Charlie whispers. “I told him you was planning to join another cattle drive in the spring, but he wants you to stay. He’s took a liking to you. You’re a lucky feller.”

  “Why don’t I feel lucky, Charlie?”

  “Well, it ain’t easy when your arse is froze,” he says with a grunt, and him and four others turned and struck backwards into the snowfall.

  What happened a few minutes later come to be called a famous battle in the history books and the general he got a power of glory out of it, but a battle is what it exactly warn’t. Whilst me and Star watched over the spare horses, the soldier boys galloped howling through the burning tents and slaughtered more’n a hundred sleepers, which the general called warriors, but who was mostly wrinkled up old men, women, and little boys and girls. I seen eyes gouged out and ears tore off and bellies slit open with their innards spilling out like sausages.

  When I turned my head away from the distressid sight, there was General Hard Ass a-setting his horse behind me. “Sorry about your soldier friend,” he says. Nothing on his face seemed to move when he spoke, except his frosty moustaches, a little. “Maybe this will help you feel that some justice has been done.” Under the stony cheekbones, there was a thin sneaky smile on the general’s face that seemed like it was chiseled there. “After we’re done punishing the Cheyenne,” he says, “we’ll go after the Lakota. I promise. Now come along. There’s something I want you to do.”

  The tribe had roped up near a thousand ponies and what the general wanted was for me to shoot them all. It seemed such a rotten low-down thing to do. They was good ponies and hadn’t hurt nobody. I says I could herd them all back to the fort, but he reckoned I couldn’t, and anyways there warn’t no use for horses broke in Indian-style. “They’re enemy weapons,” he says, “and they must be destroyed.”

  He rode off to roust me out some extra shooters and to tot up the numbers of the killed and captured natives. There warn’t no wounded ones. They was all summerly dispatched, which he said on such a night was an act of mercy. Whilst he was busy with that, I loosed up the corral ropes best I could, trying to think what Tom Sawyer would do to stir up a restlessness. He’d like enough have thought about it back at the fort and fetched along a pocketful of black pepper, but I ain’t so smart as Tom and didn’t have no pepper.

  The soldiers the general volunteered me come over from the blazing lodges, wiping their knife blades off on the seats of their pants and sucking from flasks of hard liquor. They was a most horrible sight to see. There was blood all over their hands and faces and bellies, and their shirttails was out and their eyes was popping and their teeth was showing and they was snorting and wheezing like they’d run a mile. They didn’t waste no time. They was all fired up and set right to pushing their hot gun barrels against the ponies’ heads and sending the piteous creturs crumpling to their knees. It was too many for me, I couldn’t stand it no more, but I couldn’t see no way out.

  Then, all of a sudden, Star took to bucking and kicking and I don’t know if I set him off or the flames from the camp did or if he done it himself, but the next thing all them horses was busting through the loosed ropes and bolting in all directions. I was hanging on to Star’s neck for dear life, scared of falling off and getting tromped in the stampeed. Some of the soldiers did get stomped on, but others further off was shooting at the runaway ponies, and some got away but most of them was murdered.

  Star warn’t rearing and kicking no more, but he was trembling all over, and his eyes was wild. I stroked his sweaty neck with my gloves and talked quiet in his ear, trying to steady him. I felt like him and me was drawing close and understood each other. General Hard Ass come over on his horse through the smoke and stared hard at us for a moment, and then, still smiling his frozen smile, he raised up his pistol and shot Star in the head. He looked down at me where we’d fell and says to get on one of the horses I’d led here, we was going back to the fort.

  The snowflakes was still a-drifting down in the early morning light, falling on hundreds of dead ponies and dead Indians and smoldering tepees, as we got back on the trail we’d laid down on the snow going there. I was shaking and needed a pipe, but it was too cold to take my hands out of my gloves, and my teeth was clattering so, I’d a likely bit clean through the pipe stem.

  On the way back we passed a lonely stand of froze-up cottonwood trees where the deserters was hanging. Homer, being a stout fellow, hung lower’n the others, and the snow had shook out of his thick red beard. Homer always said place never stuck to him; instead, it was him who’d got stuck to place. Their horses was standing round looking downhearted and guilty and half-froze. The officers ordered me to gather them in with the others and take them to the fort, whilst they cut down the bodies, and I done that.

  I was scared and ashamed and only wanted to run off somewheres and hide when we got back, but it was late November, which ain’t never a good time for setting of
f nowheres. Soon as spring come, though, I lit out. The army life warn’t for me. I knowed that before, but I’d forgot.

  CHAPTER VIII

  HAT WAS THE summer I become an ornerary Lakota Sioux. I’d been awful afraid a that tribe since they ambushed Dan Harper’s patrol to death, and from what people was saying, I warn’t even for certain they was human altogether. Yet, the next thing a body knows, there I am, smoking, hunting, and drinking with them, even living in one a their buffalo-skin lodges with a native woman.

  But the trail to that life warn’t a straight and easy one. When I left General Hard Ass’s fort that spring, I’d rode northards, aiming for the old Dakota Territory where I’d found work before, because if I signed onto another drive from out a Texas, I’d only end up back where the general could take a-holt of me again. He warn’t customed to people taking their leave without his say-so. Only look what happened to poor Homer. I warn’t no deserting soldier boy, I was only hired for a spare wrangler, but it warn’t reliable the general respected the difference. If the general took a notion to hang a body, he generly just went ahead and done it.

  I left fast and early without telling nobody. It was Charlie who set me running. He come by the stables one evening to talk about the scouting life. He says he reckoned I have a talent for it, and that might be useful because him and the general was having some difficulty between them. Charlie was twitchier’n he commonly was and it took him some time to get it out, but it seems the general warn’t crediting his scouting reports no more. “Well, it’s his funeral,” Charlie says spitting through his whiskers. Charlie says to keep it quiet, not to make the whole place go crazy, but what he seen out in the desert was some Cheyenne braves fixed to the ground by their navel strings, and he tried to warn the general about that, but the general wouldn’t pay no heed. “I seen ’em,” he says. “They was taking their feed direct. It’s why they cain’t be starved out, and why killing ’em don’t do no good. I lay them damn savages has made some kinder pack with the devil. I reckonized one of ’em as an injun I destroyed personal. He still had a red line acrost his throat where I took his head off, and there he was, back on his feet and sucking up strenth and meanness straight out a hell. It’s why them heathens always gather up their dead. It ain’t to bury ’em. They take ’em back and plug ’em in agin.” Charlie told the general the only way they could win the war against them was to hack out all their navels and burn them to a crisp and scatter the cinders, but the general says he didn’t think he was going to do that, and only give him a mean sneaky look like he himself was in cahoots with the devil. “So they might be needing another scout any time soon,” Charlie says, and I don’t say nothing, but soon as he was gone, I packed up.

  I’d broke in more wild mustangs at the fort by then, and I wished I could a rode one of them out so as to let Jackson track along as only a packer, but I couldn’t resk getting chased down as a horse thief on top of what-all else they might want to hang me for. So the poor old fellow got loaded up with me and a pack saddle and everything else besides, my bedroll, tent, guns, powder and percussion caps, a sack of feed and enough vittles for a couple of weeks, plus a few handy trail supplies borrowed from the fort, like tin cook-pans, matches, spare shoes for Jackson, and clean army socks for me without no holes in them. I’d won a few two-bit racing bets with Jackson back in the days when we’d just left the Pony, he was the fastest animal I’d ever rode till then, but he’d slowed considerable over our years of hard traveling and was become more a moseyer than a galloper. He hung his head mostly, looking ever so mournful and low-spirited, and he let out a snort from time to time to show how disgusted he was with everything. His snarled mane hung down like knotted rags betwixt his eyes, which was always oozing something like tears, making him even sadfuller-looking. Him and me was two of a kind back then. Sometimes we just laid down together in a lonely place and moped a while.

  We slid out at the streak of dawn, and that first day we put as many miles as we could betwixt us and the general, plodding along well past sundown. Jackson never complained. He wanted out of the army life bad as I did. The moon showed itself, one of them big fat ones with a pale face on it, and the open prairie we was passing through glowed unnatural round us like a ghost of itself. There warn’t nobody else out there, we was all alone, just a speck hardly moving in all that huge lighted-up emptiness, companied by the creepy night music, somewheres far off, of owls and wolves. “It’s like the end of the world out here,” I says to Jackson, and my voice scared me, so I didn’t say nothing more.

  Finally, when the night sky was blackest, the moon brightest, we come upon a glittery water hole with a few skinny trees and dry shrubs loitering round it. I knowed the water could be pisoned, but there warn’t no bones or skulls I could see and we was mighty thirsty, so we pushed our snouts in and drunk our fill. We was too tired to keep on going on. We settled onto a patch of bunch grass alongside of the water for Jackson to nubble on and for me to spread open my bedroll and empty it out. I was too sleepy to strike a fire, so I peeled a potato and et it raw, then rolled myself into the blanket, dreaming of a hot breakfast of coffee, bacon rind and beans in the morning.

  I dropped off so hard I didn’t know nothing till I waked up with the sun in my eyes and my belly fretting from emptiness. What I seen when I could see was that we’d had visitors overnight. Things was chawed up and scattered and all my vittles was gone. I couldn’t tell how big the varmints was, but we was probably lucky all they wanted was the vittles. What it minded me of was that, no matter what it might a seemed like in the moonlight, we warn’t never alone by ourselves out there. Even that lonesome prairie was a-swarm with living creturs, and nary a one of them that warn’t desperately hungry.

  Then I seen, far off on the horizon, varmints of a familiarer sort. Dust was raising up from a train of covered wagons, pulled by oxes and slowly rolling my way. I could make out people walking longside, women and children amongst them. I gathered up all my scattered goods what warn’t ruined and rolled them into my blanket and tied it up, filled my canteen from the water hole, loaded up Jackson again, and rode out to meet them, hoping they might have some corn-bread or jerky for a poor wayfaring stranger.

  There was a white-bearded gent setting the lead wagon, and when I drawed close enough, he tipped his black hat at me and shouted, “God bless you, sir! Who are you and what’s your business out here?”

  “Huckleberry Finn, sir. I’m heading up Fort Laramie way to look for work,” I shouted back, touching the floppy brim of my own crumpled hat, whilst keeping my eye on the fellows walking along with their rifles out. The women and children looked scared to see me.

  “Why, that’s where we’re a-going. Ain’t you pointed the wrong way?”

  “No, sir. You must a left the trail. Fort Laramie is over your shoulder.”

  The old fellow looked back like he was trying to see it somewheres off on the bare horizon. He was setting beside a little old lady in a white sun-bonnet, smiling kindly at me behind her wire-rim spectacles. A couple of the bullwhackers come over to palaver with them. They called him Reverend. They looked up at the sun and done some pointing and calculating, and then the old fellow hollered out, “How many days we got to go, you reckon?”

  “For me and my horse, a week maybe, but for your wagons, at least three.”

  They all give themselves a sad look. “You ever been up thataway?”

  “Yes, sir, I’ve got some practice,” I says. “Rode that stretch for the Pony Express, then scouted some. Helped move a herd of breeding cattle up into the Montana Territory. They know me at the forts.”

  “The Pony Express! Do tell! We was thinking about maybe preceding on Montana way. Are you a shooter?”

  “When I got to be.”

  After the reverend and his followers had got their heads together again, he says, “Well, maybe you could join us. We’re only jest pore Christian missionaires, a-looking for the Promised Land. We don’t have no money, but we got enough breadstuff to feed you
and your horse as fur as Fort Laramie.”

  I warn’t untempted. I was most about starved and there warn’t much to hunt nor fish for out there, but I says, “That’s mighty kind, mister, but I’m dead busted and I need to earn some money. I think I best get on to Laramie as fast I can.”

  The reverend raised his hand like to say wait a minute, got a nod from the others, and says, “Well, we can offer you nine dollars and free grub for the three weeks. If you’ll also hunt for us.”

  “That ain’t Christian, Ezekiel,” says the old lady beside him, wearing her sweet smile like the main argument. “You should pay him twenty dollars like you done that slicker you hired who got us lost.”

  “Hush, Abigail.”

  “You got family, son?” she asked.

  “No’m. I’m an orphan.”

  “There. You see, Ezekiel?”

  Abigail was still smiling. Old Ezekiel seen he was beat. “All right, then,” he says, and he gives a grumpy little shrug. “A dollar a day up to twenty, payable when we get there.” Their wagons was moving mighty slow and the general’s fort warn’t all that far away yet, but I’d been ready to take the nine dollars so as to get fed, so I nodded. “Which way you reckon we should go?”

  “Best aim up towards Fort Sedgwick and the Oregon Trail,” I says, pointing, and they all swiveled around. I knowed that border stretch well because of the plague of desperadoes and warring tribes that habited the region back when me and Tom was riding through it for the Pony. Our home station up at Horseshoe Crick warn’t no Sunday school nuther, but that Julesburg relay station a-near the Nebraska line was a dreadful wild place. We had to keep our heads down and push fast as we could so as to dodge all the murdrous road agents and Indians. Even the stationmaster was a bandit, so we had to keep our routes secret from him not to get waylaid by his own boys. I was always scared, but there warn’t nothing made Tom so all over happy as heeling it through there when the bullets and arrows was flying. “The mail must go through!” he would yell out, laughing like crazy. He wrote down what he done every day in a little purpul notebook, adding a few stretchers and some things people told him, and he read it to me whenever we was in the same place at the same time. He called it “The Wild West Adventures of Tom Sawyer and His Trusty Sidekick Huckleberry Finn.” Huckleberry was pretty stupid, but with Tom Sawyer’s help, he done interesting things. “The railroad stops a-near there now,” I says to the missionaires, “and there’s outfitters and trading stations where you can rest your bulls and stock up for the rest a the trip.”